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JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
An adequate metaphysics does not annul but conserves and transfigures the obstinate elements of permanence and change. No doubt both the great systems display a rigorous internal consistency, but they lack comprehensiveness. Unless the claims of the two brothers are evenly accommodated philosophy becomes a haunted house constantly assailed by the ghost of the maltreated brother. An inclusive view of reality is a sure corrective to the one-sidedness. It should, therefore, be based on a concrete conception in which the co-ordinate ideas of being and becoming, identity and difference, universal and particular are harmoniously comprehended.
The failure of each of the two great systems so far considered is at once grand and fruitful-grand because of the depth of insight each has revealed in bringing out a massive system of thought into which some of the sublime elements of human thinking are wrought and fruitful because each has exhausted all the weapons it could possibly bring into its fight against the other and thereby shown how the inadequate postulates with which it started inevitably lead to a partial reading of the secrets of complex reality. Great as it is, this failure points to the need for a sturdy synthesis of the elements 'permanence' and change', 'identity' and difference', and 'universal' and 'particular' at all levels -ontological, epistemological and logical. A brief account of each of the schools which have attempted such a synthesis is offered in the following chapters.
